


bella detesta matribus

by havethecouragetoexist



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, How does it work, I honestly have no clue, Suicidal Thoughts, tagging??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8131780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havethecouragetoexist/pseuds/havethecouragetoexist
Summary: A mother's love knows no bounds; neither, naturally, does her grief.Five mothers who lost their children.





	

Elia stands by the window to her chambers, hand clutching at the ledge, eyes fixed on the men in red and gold livery below, the blood rushing from her head and making her vision swim as she realises how easy it would be to just lean over and –

No.

It is hard – gods, is it hard, not to give in, to give _up_. She is so tired, so tired and so alone, and she feels ill in a way she has not felt in years, ill in a way that makes her want to lie down and never get back up.

The screaming had started a while ago; the screaming from the nursery, where she had hidden Rhaenys and Aegon. _Mama!_ Rhaenys had screamed, had cried and begged, and Elia had heard it all, the sounds drifting in through the open window – the cries Rhaenys had made, Aegon’s wails, high and thin, as Elia was kept, in her chambers, by Lannister men in red and gold, their faces hard and cold as they slammed the doors to her chambers in her face. Elia had wanted to save them, Lannisters be damned, but Elia had beat on the doors until her fists were red and bloody, had screamed back for her daughter until her throat was hoarse, and still she had been trapped, the sounds of her children’s suffering ringing in her ears.

And then the screaming had stopped.

The screaming had stopped and Elia had sagged down against the door, and she had known, _she had known_ , because something had snapped in her heart at that moment, and now somehow the silence is so much worse.

She had walked back across the room at some point, in a daze, and now Elia looks down into the yard again, at the corpses of the green boys left behind to guard the Red Keep in the place of the seasoned warriors who followed their Prince to war, their skulls cracked open on the stones below, blood staining the ground, and Elia thinks it should be so easy to join them, so easy now that her children are dead and her husband is dead and there is surely nothing left to live for and yet –

She thinks of her mother, long dead now, but she remembers the Princess as she was alive, black eyes always fiery and snapping, the sun and the spear made flesh in the way she stood, and the way she walked, and the way she commanded. She thinks of Doran, kind and gentle in his own way, but also unyielding like the rest of their family, always wise and always with a listening ear and counsel for Elia, even if he had been almost a man grown the first time he saw her. She thinks of Oberyn, his lopsided smile and his dangerous, viper’s moods, and she even thinks of Mellario, of Oberyn’s paramour Ellaria, of her nieces – Doran’s Arianne and Oberyn’s Sand Snake – and Elia remembers.

If anything, remembering only makes the loss of her children hurt more. Rhaenys, Dornish to the core, in the way she laughed and the way her temper burned hotter than the sun and the way her brown curls danced around her olive-toned face. Aegon, barely half a year old and the son that Rhaegar had wanted for so long, his Prince that Was Promised, and yet Aegon barely even got to see his father, his mirror in all the ways that Rhaenys was Elia’s, before – before.

Elia thinks of her children and weeps afresh, head leaning heavily against the cool marble as the sobs tear through her body, and her chest feels as if it is constricting impossibly and yet bursting apart at once, and she is tired to her very bones, as if feeling every illness this body has ever cursed her with at once. Elia thinks of her children and she cries, she rages and rails against the gods for so rarely granting her happiness before taking it away, and when she is spent her eyes are red-rimmed and her throat is sore but most importantly, most importantly despite how it hurts, how it tears at her inside, she remembers.

She remembers Dorne and her family, remembers Sunspear and the Water Gardens, remembers how she told Rhaegar once she wanted to take the children to play in the pools, to explore the dunes, to pick their way along the rocky coast like how she and Oberyn did as children and she _remembers_.

_Unbowed, unbent, unbroken._

Those are her words, and she will not forsake them. Not now, not with Rhaegar dead, not in front of these Lannister lions, not even if her children are gone.

She will see them soon, in any case – of that she is sure. She has no doubt that Tywin Lannister has no plans to leave her alive, and she has no doubt that she will never walk out of the Red Keep with her heart still beating in her chest again, but suddenly becoming one of the other bodies, dashed out on the ground below her holds no more appeal.

She turns away from the window, and stands in the middle of the room.

She is Elia Martell, Princess of Dorne, and even if she is to face her death, she will face it with her head held high.

It is the least she can do for her children, her children whom she failed, her children whom she left to die the most unjust of deaths.

_Rhaenys. Aegon. Wait for me._

~~~

The raven finds its way through the bogs, somehow, weeks into their search for Greywater Watch, and it only serves to make heavier the strange sense of unease and dread that settled in the pit of her stomach days ago.

 _Dark wings, dark words_.

The raven dies almost the moment it lands on the deck, fatigued and starving from a long journey through the bogs with barely any food or water, and Maege Mormont pries the message from its stiff leg with her heart pounding a dizzying rhythm in her chest.

An announcement, from the Boltons, styling themselves the new Wardens of the North, an almost boastful telling of the massacre at Edmure Tully’s wedding, and among the list of the dead –

Dacey Mormont.

Her firstborn, her strong, fierce, daughter, elegant in dance and even more so with a longsword, long brown hair pulled back into a braid and swinging around her sweat-stained face as she sparred in the yard with her mother and the master-at-arms and, later, her sisters. The way her bottom lip trembled with the effort of not crying the first time she fell and went running into Maege’s arms, the way her eyes shone when her sisters were born and she got to hold them.

And gods, but Maege suddenly feels every inch her age, too old to be fighting in a war of young kings, her bones aching and cold to the marrow as she passes the missive to Lord Glover and retreats to her quarters without a word. She wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to rip Walder Frey and Roose Bolton apart with her own two hands, but more than anything she wants to abandon this fool’s errand, given to her by a king who is dead like his father before him. She wants to turn this ship around and make for Bear Island, smell the fresh pine and the salt of the sea, and hold her remaining daughters as tightly as she can, proud Alysane and shy Lyra and cheerful Jory and spitfire Lyanna.

( _Gods, Dacey._ )

She wants to go _home_ , but then Greywater Watch rises out of the fog and the marshes, and Galbart Glover (unmarried and childless, young and full of a desire for vengeance and glory) looks at her in a pitying way that makes her hackles rise, and she pushes everything aside, forces her grief for her child and her longing for home and her fear for her daughters out of the way.

She has been given a duty, and a king’s command is still a king’s command, dead or no. Maege Mormont will see to it that her king’s wishes are fulfilled.

~~~

They hear of the dragon queen, in Norvos.

How could they not? The Free Cities are abundant in many things, not the least of them gossip, and so the wind carries stories to Mellario, stories of this silver-haired girl styling herself the Mother of Dragons.

The last Targaryens that Mellario knew did not have dragons, and she wonders how things might have gone differently if they had. Perhaps Rhaegar Targaryen would have been able to better protect her goodsister; perhaps Elia Martell and her children would not have died for nothing, at the hands of a butcher.

Either way, she hears much and more of the Targaryen girl queen – _girl_ , because try as she might Mellario cannot forget the night that the news of the Queen’s baby daughter had arrived, raw on the heels of Elia’s death, knows that she cannot be more than seven and ten – and so when a traveler from Meereen brings stories of a quiet young man dead in dragonfire, Mellario can barely breathe.

He had brought no more than a few companions and a marriage proposal, the travelling silk merchant tells her, and his clothes were embroidered with the emblem of a sun pierced by a spear. One day he took it upon himself to visit the dragons without their mother to calm them, and when they finally found the body it was burnt beyond recognition, identifiable only by a scrap of clothing that had barely escaped being torched.

Dornish silk, nowhere near as luxurious or extravagant as the fabrics peddled in the markets of the Free Cities, but woven to withstand the heat of an endlessly burning sun.

The gods only know what her son was doing in Meereen, courting the Targaryen queen, but what does it matter now?

Quentyn is gone and Mellario – Mellario shuts herself up in her chambers after the Meereenese woman leaves and refuses to let her handmaidens in. It is dark, and too warm, and the air is suffocating-thick, but she cannot bear to step out, cannot bear to look at the sun when she knows that her child will never feel its warmth on his skin again.

She had been furious, furious and helpless when Quentyn was sent to foster with the Yronwoods. Her boy, already quiet and serious even at that young age, and she had _begged_ Doran not to take her child away from her, but he had only insisted in that dutiful, apologetic way of his, and no matter how she raged and cried and guiled he would not budge.

(She senses Doran’s hand in this, and it is bitter, and twisted, the rage that rises in her when she realises that his plots have forced the death of their _son_.)

Not for the first time, she wonders if it was the right thing to do, turning her back on Dorne; and, in some way, on her children. The letters help, of course, and Arianne and Quentyn and Trystane visit every now and again, sometimes even with Oberyn’s daughters, and Mellario still knows she would never have been happy in Dorne, but still.

She thinks of all the moments she has missed, his first loves and first heartbreaks, his knighthood, his first tourney, things that she rarely thought to ask after, and that Quentyn never spoke of himself – she always had hated how he became so much more like his father as he grew older, withdrawn and secretive. And now she thinks of all the moments she will never have to opportunity to talk to him about, a marriage, perhaps, and children.

She is angry – at Doran, for sending him on this mission; at Quentyn, for agreeing; at herself, mostly, for not caring enough, not having the presence of mind to hold him as close as she could before he was gone. Her son, who used to cry whenever she put him down, who used to get scrapes and bruises from climbing the bookshelves of Sunspear’s library, who used to promise to protect his sister like a true knight and who had played like every other child in the Water Gardens, carefree and innocent.

Mellario sits on her bed and stares into the grey-brown darkness of her chambers, and her throat is thick, her eyes burning, but they remain dry and aching. She was never one for tears, and even now they do not come. Instead, their weight rests queasy inside, roiling deep in her abdomen, the tears turning to bile and sweat, tongue dry, chest heaving.

 _(Quentyn_. Plain and bookish and eager to please and young, too young to die.)

She exits her chambers one day later, lips chapped and dry, eyes red and swollen.

“Get ready,” she tells her handmaidens, “We make for Dorne.”

(Mellario of Norvos may have lost her son, but there still remain two children to her, and she’ll be damned if she lets them go again.)

~~~

They almost don’t tell her.

They almost don’t tell her, but Rhaella has not survived by Aerys’ side for decades without learning to be observant, and so when a raven comes and everyone on Dragonstone avoids looking her and Viserys in the eye, and talk behind her back in hushed whispers, Rhaella feels cold, cold dread settle deep in her belly.

She is heavy with child, the babe due to arrive in mere weeks, her back aching and her feet so swollen that she can barely stand, but the next time the maester comes to her chambers to check on her and the babe he finds her standing steady, drawn to her full height, every inch a queen despite her slight pallor and her raw, red ankles.

(It is a skill that Rhaella Targaryen has learnt, over the years; how to hide her pain behind a dragon’s mask, and sometimes she even almost manages to convince herself.)

“There has been news.” She says without preamble, one pale eyebrow raised at the maester who freezes in the doorway of her bedchamber. There is no questioning lilt to her tone; Rhaella sees, she listens and observes and she _knows_ there is something being hidden from her, and now she is commanding, not asking.

“I – your Grace,” The man stammers and sketches a clumsy bow, his chins quivering as he looks everywhere but at her.

“Tell me.” It is not a request; her voice is laced with steel and her presence compelling, and the maester fidgets even more.

He stammers and hedges for a while, tries to act like she hasn’t said anything and reaches to check on the babe, but Rhaella ignores him, continues to stand still as the stone dragons the castle is named for, slapping his hands away irritably until he gives in.

“There was a battle, at the Trident,” he meets her gaze, finally, and looks away just as quickly, but that fleeting look into his eyes is more than enough – more than enough to make the room spin, and Rhaella knows what he will say next.

“Prince Rhaegar is –”

“Dead.” Her own voice sounds strange, to her ears, and when the maester nods, once, Rhaella twists her hands into the fabric of her dress, closes her eyes briefly, allows herself this one moment of weakness before she speaks again, “And the king?”

“No word from him, your Grace.”

_Of course._

She wonders if Aerys will mourn Rhaegar, the son who was such a disappointment to him.

(But then again, she supposes she will mourn enough for both of them.)

“Leave me.” The maester looks like he is about to argue, for a moment, but she just looks at him, face completely smooth and blank, but the light behind her indigo eyes burns, and he thinks better of it, murmurs a greeting and leaves the room.

The moment the door closes behind him, Rhaella crumples to the floor.

_Oh, Rhaegar. You foolish, foolish boy._

He always had been obsessed with that damned prophecy, like his grandparents had been, and Rhaella can’t help but feel like she should have known, she should have seen and she should have stopped her son before he took the Stark girl and sent the kingdom spiraling into war.

And now he is dead, dead at the hands of the storm lord Robert Baratheon and his own duty. Even as a boy Rhaegar was already too dutiful by half, melancholy and bound by those self-made chains of his destiny, first as the Prince that Was Promised and then his damned need to have his three heads.

Rhaella can barely breathe, the weak light struggling in through the curtains suddenly too bright and black spots swimming in her vision, her chest contracting painfully and she realises dimly that the maester and her handmaidens were probably trying to avoid this exact thing, afraid that she would lose the babe.

(Some voice inside her, the voice of the woman that has loved and lost a dozen short-lived heirs whispers that this unborn child is ever more important now that Rhaegar is gone, and something about it makes Rhaella’s shoulders shake with hysterical laughter.)

The floors of Dragonstone are cold and unforgiving, and the ground bites into Rhaella’s knees as she kneels, arm reaching up and fingers wrapped around the bedpost in a white-knuckled grip, breath spiraling out of her in thin, reedy gasps, but she cannot find it in herself to get up.

She could barely bring herself to go near Rhaegar when he was born, afraid that he would wither away like the countless other babes she had birthed before him, and it was only after the first year when it became clear he would live, would _finally, finally_ be the heir that Aerys had so long raged for, that she had resolved to herself to hold him as tightly as she could.

She wonders, now, when she lost that silver-haired boy, nothing like her husband in the way his indigo eyes sparked with mischief, not malice, and how he would hold her hand as he toddled around the Red Keep.

That boy vanished, turned into a solemn young man who broke her heart every day with how he drew further and further away from her and into himself, and now, even that man is lost to her.

Rhaella feels another wave of hysteria coming when she realises that she still outlived the first ever child who lived longer than a month, but this time she doesn’t laugh.

This time, she weeps, silent, hidden teardrops that are absorbed into the stone, sobs muffled somehow by the walls of the room, as if Dragonstone itself is swallowing up her grief.

~~~

They call her Stoneheart.

It makes no difference to her what they call her, in truth, but it seems to make men tread carefully around her, and so she allows it.

It is better, after all, than admitting to this broken band of followers, that she barely remembers what came before. Flashes of banners in blue and grey, a wolf, perhaps, leaping in a river – or was it some type of fish? A man; long, solemn face with gentle grey eyes and a careworn face, children with hair the same dark brown as the man, or eyes the bright flashing blue of the Riverlands sky, and try as she might she can barely remember any of their names, can barely recall anything of them beyond the grief that made her want to tear her beating heart out of her chest when she lost them all, one by one, her lord husband and her sweet, sweet babes.

(Stoneheart.)

She doesn’t understand fully the meaning of that name, she thinks, nor does she care to. There is little she bothers to understand these days, beyond the cold, biting kiss of steel at her throat, hands tugging at her scalp, her then-auburn hair that is almost all gone now, although it still comes apart in her hands in brittle-grey handfuls sometimes ( _Ned_ , that was his name, and he loved her hair, he loved her hair), and the all-consuming rage every time she watches another Frey die, kicking and choking.

( _Frey_. She remembers little, but that name is bright and burning in what is left of her memory; she remembers that those were the hands that took away any joy she had left, until she was left with nothing but the near-forgotten shades of her family and a cold, cold emptiness inside her that is only sometimes filled with the grim satisfaction of letting them die at her hands.)

She doesn’t sleep anymore, not really, strange half-human thing that she is. Instead, she leans against a tree when her followers make camp, and closes her eyes in some mockery of sleep. Sometimes, sometimes, she hears the trees whisper to her; hears the semi-familiar voice of a boy who climbed and fell and flew call to her, but the voice is always gone before she can place it. She mentions it once to the red priest, but he simply stares at her with a queer look in his eyes, and she never speaks of it again, because she realises what they whisper about her when they think she cannot hear.

_Mad. Mad with a mother’s grief._

She _is_ mad, perhaps – it is of little importance to her, in the face of that overwhelming desire that takes over her when they go on the hunt; the hunt for the false men who killed her family. Sometimes, though, sometimes the Frey man crying in front of her, his breeches wet with piss, begs for mercy – the Mother’s mercy.

No matter.

They killed her children; she no longer belongs to the Mother.

Stoneheart belongs to the Stranger.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason i never seem to really know how to write fics except when i have an exam in two days so good job me. 
> 
> Anyway a few things: I personally don't think that Elia would have been in a different room from her children during the sack of King's Landing; most likely, she sent her maids away and looked after her children herself those last few days and the Mountain killed her before he killed her kids but i decided to take some creative liberties for the premise of this fic to work. Secondly, I do think Mellario would know about Quentyn's death before Doran does, and I do think that she would not be content with sending him some angry ravens because this is the woman who packed up and left when she was done with Doran's shit so. Lastly the title is a latin phrase that roughly means war, the horror of mothers (or something like that) that i read somewhere once and i really liked it and i thought it was appropriate. I'm sorry if I've offended anyone with unintended mangling of latin?
> 
> In any case I hope you liked the fic! It's unbeta-ed so any mistakes are all mine, and any constructive criticism is definitely welcome. I'm so sorry if some of the metaphors or whatever used seem really similar I wrote this up over a couple of days so i'm not sure if i repeated any of my mental images. Also, hmu if you wanna come fight gently about the characterisation of our ladies; I've always thought that characterisation is one of, if not the most important parts of a story and I would love to hear your thoughts on how they are portrayed here, even if you don't agree with how I've written them.
> 
> Also, I'm on tumblr at sorciere-ecarlate if you wanna come cry about the Martells with me.


End file.
